I mean, for individual stocks and such, yeah, maybe look for values and whatnot. I'm still looking for buys and all that, but I'm not going to try and do that with my 401k was all I was saying. Generally I just pull back on my contributions when it feels too high, and up my contributions when it starts to crash, but I don't play with the ratio. I just let the target fund do what it does.
But... you literally can.
I pulled my money out to stable/bonds last year awaiting a drop, which came.
Then I bought in when the DOW was around 21-22k.
Now I am up 28%, I see another downturn coming and I pull out to safer funds and do it again.
This isn't some wildly difficult quant analysis I'm doing, nor do I need some special tricks or privileges... I put my money where I want it.
Executing these things takes button clicks on a website, that's it.
So right now if you want to do what I did... login to your 401k provider, go to your investments, choose to do a full rebalance, and choose to move your money to bonds or "stable" funds, then switch your contributions to go to the same % as your new funds.
When the market turns around later, you go in and do the opposite.... reallocate to your favorite stock/growth funds and send contributions to those funds as well.
Would you allow people to tell you this when you buy something on sale?
"Don't try to time the bread market, just buy it today."
"Don't try to time the TV market, just buy it today."
"Don't try to time the Steam market, just buy it today."
No one listens to this kind of advice in any other circumstance lol, but your money... your fucking retirement fund.... oh don't touch that, don't try to time the market, it is way too complicated, just buy regularly so the professionals can make money timing the market.
Sorry for the rant, but "Don't time the market" is complete and utter nonsense that people need to stop believing in as a general principal.
Might as well start telling people "Don't try to time the weather, just do whatever you have to do in the middle of a hurricane or blizzard or w/e, you'll never time it right"
Oh or I could wait for it to stop raining using very publicly available tools/data, and then go outside.